6 replies so far

I’ve got a friend near me that has one of those duplicators. The best I can remember all that came with it was a diagram of how it’s suppose to go together. If no LJ has one I’ll give him a call and ask him about.

gdemo, I talked to my friend on the phone. He said he would be home about noon and would give me a call. I think I’ll just go over there and take a look at it again and let him give you some ideas on it if a LJ don’t jump in that maybe has one and give you some pointers.

gdemo: I was looking at this duplicator also and would be very interested in how it works for you. I would like to use it for making chair legs out of 2” stock on an older delta lathe with a bed of about 40”plus. Did it come with any extra bits/cutters or are they available through other vendors? Any hassles mounting it?bruc101: How does your friend like his? Would he recommend it?Thanks

I went over to my friend’s shop and carried a leg blank and one of my patterns with me. We put the pattern and leg blank in the duplicator and turned it in about 15 minutes. He has pros and cons with the duplicator.When he got the duplicator several years ago and looked at the install instructions he said the bottom plates that hold the duplicator to the lathe were missing and the instructions were poor to none so he just winged it mounting it on this lathe. He had to clamp it to his lathe with clamps until he could come up with a solution to mount it because part of adjusting the duplicator to the difference between small legs and wide legs was having to move the duplicator to and away from the leg blank. He had a machine shop make him two brackets that would allow the adjustments he needed to slide the duplicator in and out.He said the duplicator was difficult sometimes to keep in adjustment because of it getting loose on him when he was turning large legs. He said sometimes he could be turning a leg and the cutter would dig into the leg and ruin the leg when the duplicator decided it wanted to come out of adjustment with him.The next improvement on the lathe was to have a different stylus made. The one that came with the duplicator was to big and would not set deep enough into some of the radius’s on the pattern so he had a stylus made like I use on my Vega duplicator which looks like a sharp chisel. He showed me several legs he had recently turned with the duplicator. Understand, a duplicator moves left and right directly and in and out so on some legs, and I have to do this also with my Vega, take turning chisels and finish the more detailed parts of a leg. Another thing he has just done to the wheel has added two strips of 1 inch x 12 inch pieces of wood as handles so it’s easier to turn and he said that made the duplicator turn a little smoother instead of trying to use the little wheel.He’s going to mount the duplicator on a new Delta lathe that his daughters are giving him for his birthday this weekend. He does a lot of turnings and he said the duplicator has good days and bad days but for the price he could live with it. Hope this helps.